


How do you Milk a Batcow?

by Trista_zevkia



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types, World's Finest (Comics)
Genre: Breeding, Canon Compliant, Discussion of Rape, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 01:49:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trista_zevkia/pseuds/Trista_zevkia
Summary: Sometimes, even the Bat-family has to call in an expert.





	How do you Milk a Batcow?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SpaceOddity1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceOddity1/gifts).



> I wanted to write something in the new 52 rebirth verse, but this is what stuck in my brain. My apologies, [ SpaceOddity1 ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceOddity1).

Being nigh invulnerable meant there were few restrictions on Superman, other than him not wanting to be a jerk. For example, he could eavesdrop on individuals from space, but tried not to do it unless it served justice. One important restriction, one that he paid attention to out of more than self-respect, was the growled command to stay out of Gotham.

Which was a shame, as Gotham was a fascinating place, with a long history and interesting architecture. Bit dark for Superman's personal taste, but it held a certain appeal. Not that Superman spent a great deal of time in Gotham at the museum, and really, if he was looking at the architecture he was looking for a figure hidden in it. A figure that might, if he really thought about it, be part of the reason he liked Gotham. He carefully didn't think about it as that way lay madness and a possible beat down. 

Still, when Superman got an email on the JL server telling him to meet above the batcave, he took off as soon as he read it. He got to Gotham, found an alley without a working camera and became Clark Kent, then he snuck out to Wayne Manor. What else could Bruce mean by above the cave? He still flew the distance and went over the fence, as he was only showing up on Bruce's cameras, and no humans were watching Clark Kent leap a tall fence in a single bound. 

He then x-rayed around, looking to see where Bruce might be waiting on him. When it turned out that everybody was outside, except Alfred, Clark was glad he took a look. Then he was able to casually walk up to where everybody was gathered, around some large heat source he didn’t look too closely at. It looked like Bruce and all of his kids were clustered in a new building, a sort of miniature playhouse version of a barn. Or maybe what a rich person thought a barn looked like, as it was barnhouse red with tidy white trim, gabled roof, windows, shutters and window boxes under the windows. Window boxes with flowers, that an animal that lived in a barn would eat the first chance it got. It was really a strange thing to see on the grounds of stately Wayne Manor. 

Apparently, the barn was big enough to hold one cow. 

He'd seen the heat signatures of the people clustered out here, but hadn't bothered to count the people involved. The doors for the cow, complete with white x's, were on the back, and the front had a human sized door. The front also had a little porch, with fence railings. Cas and Steph sat on one such porch railing, Steph being the only one to wave when she saw Clark. Tim sat on the other railing, tablet in hand as he researched. Bruce leaned against Tim's railing, eyes tracking, evaluating and dismissing Clark. Years of this dismissive look kept Clark from reacting. 

Damian was petting the cow's head, while Jason and Dick stared at the cow's rump and muttered at each other. There was a shiny new bucket at their feet. Clark was not a detective, not like this family, but it sure looked as if they were trying to milk a cow. Which, what? 

"If you'd mentioned farming in the email, I could have changed into jeans." For the very first time since he'd started visiting Wayne Manor, Clark felt overdressed in his off-the-rack suit. 

"If you ruin that I'll buy you a new one." Bruce muttered. 

"With my pocket change." Damian added. 

The cow mooed. 

Still a real, live, actual facts cow on the grounds of stately Wayne Manor. How did one bring up the elephant in the room, or the cow in the toy barn? 

"Pretty cow." Lame, but Clark did not wince at it. 

"Clark, Damian needs instruction in how to milk his cow." Bruce said. 

"Batcow." Damian was quick to correct. 

Bruce gave a tiny sigh. "Batcow." 

Clark bit his lip to keep back the giggle and the desire to get Bruce to say it again. "So what have you already tried on Batcow?" 

"Youtube." Tim replied, from where he sat, still focused on his electronic devices. 

"You asked youtube how to milk a cow?" Clark clarified. 

"The first run brought up a country music parody video, then how major farms milked cows, then I found how do you hand milk a cow." Tim shrugged, "when that brought up thousands of results, Bruce emailed you." 

"Dealing with live animals is something you might be better off learning about from someone with experience." Clark offered. 

"Well, Batcow has not been receptive to any of the techniques I found." Tim sounded annoyed at his research, as the internet was not supposed to let him down when it came to finding information. People on the internet were supposed to let you down, but not the necessary information he was trying to find. 

"What did she do, when you tried to milk her?" 

"She hasn't kicked anybody, but she keeps sticking her leg in the way, deliberately." Jason piped up, as apparently Dick and him were the ones doing the actual milking. 

"Are your hands cold?" Clark's question got everybody's attention, so he shrugged at them. "It's a matter of personal preference, some cows don't like cold hands." 

Now the group turned to stare at Batcow, as if she'd confirm that she preferred warm hands. Clark bit back another laugh. 

"Do you know when she weaned?" 

"She was this size when we got her." Damian said, and only continued when Clark continued to wait for an answer. "If she's fully grown what does it matter when she was weaned?" 

"When did she stop feeding her calf?" Clark clarified, moving over slowly to gently feel Batcow's udder with his warm hands. The udder was lose, certainly not bursting with milk needing to come out. Clark looked up to find the batfamily looking at him like, well, like he was an alien from another planet. Except for Bruce, who Clark was pretty sure was asleep with his eyes at half-mast. Standing up, Clark stroked Batcow as he talked. 

"Okay. Where did you acquire Batcow? I can't ask where she came from because somebody might make a joke about reproduction but apparently you don't know how that works and I'd have to roll my eyes and call you city boys in a derogatory tone. Could somebody give me her origin story?" 

"The Demon Star, the organization that happened when Tali tried to replace Ra's Al Ghul, was trying to take over Gotham." Tim started the story. "By stealing an idea from the Joker and tainting the food supply. Cattle, not fish." 

"Joker wanted to be paid for the fish, not poison everybody with them." Jason clarified. 

"I must be confused with the time he tried to taint the water supply." Tim muttered, rolling his eyes at Jason, the Joker, or the fact that this was something they had to specify. 

"Father and I stopped the Demon Star, but will not rebrand Batcow." Damian declared. 

"Bruce had to run his tests and needed a viable sample." Dick nodded to Batcow. 

Bruce said nothing, a good indicator that he was not paying too much attention. 

"Damian started calling her Batcow and declared himself a vegetarian." Steph smirked but sounded a little bit proud too. 

"After the crisis, Alfred had this barn built." Dick gestured to the structure. 

"I did not think it was in her best interest to keep a cow in the cave." Alfred mentioned, having snuck up on Clark at some point. He had a tray of mugs, hot chocolate for everyone, including Clark. Clark took one with a quiet thanks. 

"So, what's her secret identity? Can't call her Batcow on the vet's records." Clark asked surprising himself at the question. 

"Damian already named the cat Alfred." Alfred said, his voice so polite Clark had no idea how he felt about that. 

"She did join the family when she witnessed a crime and the death of loved ones." Tim mentioned in a very resigned tone. 

"And she stopped a crime after she joined us." Damian proclaimed, pride heavy in his tone. 

Clark held up his hand to get them to stop. This he had to hear from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. A couple of steps and he was able to poke Bruce in the arm. He let Bruce blink a few times to get back to the real world. He took those few seconds to revel in the thought that Bruce had been able to relax with Clark there, like Clark was part of the family. When Bruce was focused enough to be annoyed at being poked Clark asked him, as calmly as he could. 

"Batcow stopped a crime?" 

"Fence designed to look pretty while keeping people out, not to keep a cow in. She found an escape, got into the road. Carjackers didn't see the black cow until they were really close, swerved not to hit her, got the ditch instead. The cop car chasing them saw the whole thing. Dash cam footage exists. Car seat kept the baby in the jacked car safe, carjackers went to the hospital. While waiting for backup, baby was crying, glass bottle had broken in the chase. Cop tried to milk batcow." 

"Batcow needs to be able to produce milk in case it comes up again." Damian ordered. 

"Master Damian is also aware that milking Batcow from this point on will be his daily responsibility." Alfred pointed out in a firm voice. 

Clark guessed Alfred didn't have cow husbandry in his remarkable list of skills. 

"Okay city folks, gather round and let the country mouse explain a few things." Clark said, working hard to sound upbeat and not condescending. "Cows produce milk to feed their calves. When the calf stops feeding, or is weaned, the cow stops producing milk. Humans milk cows, faking that the calves are still feeding, so the cow produces milk much longer than her calf needs it, and humans get milk. Eventually, the cow will stop giving milk. When that happens, the cow has to get pregnant again and have another calf to restart milk production. Usually, milking cows only get sent to the slaughterhouse if they are substandard milk producers or at the end of their useful life span. Or the dairy farmer needs a quick infusion of cash, but let's not get into that. Beatrice doesn't look old enough to be sent to a slaughterhouse." 

"Beatrice?" Dick laughed. 

"She looks like a Beatrice to you?" Jason laughingly asked at the same time. 

Damian only frowned as he looked at Batcow, to see if the name fit. 

Clark ignored them to continue. "I can make some educated," Clark paused, desperate to avoid the word guesses around this pack of detectives. Did detectives come in packs, or like crows, should it be a murder of detectives? "Deductive reasoning." 

"Inductive." Bruce muttered, and Clark chose to ignore him. 

"I don't see Talia or Ra's Al Goul as ranchers. So they probably acquired a herd, infected them, and sent them all to the slaughterhouse without much concern for the future viability of the cattle operation. Even if they had them for a decade trying to get the poison right, once they were slaughtered and in Gotham's food supply they wouldn't care much about sustaining the operation. As such, even the young, healthy milking cows like Bernice were sent to the slaughterhouse. So, get her seen by a vet and make sure whatever they did to her won't be transmitted in her milk, and you should get several years of milk and calves out of her, once she's been breed." 

"Ewww." Jason muttered, which Clark thought was rich coming from the batkid most likely to come home covered in other people's bodily fluids. The appearance of any of the batfamily was enough to make hardened criminals pee themselves, but Cas never showed up smelling like it. 

"This is why I am now a vegetarian." Damian declared. 

"Vegetarians still drink milk and eat cheese." Clark pointed out but shut up before mentioning vegans. Damian was everything people mocked vegans for and he wasn't even one yet, so Clark didn't want to be the one responsible for inflicting that on the world. 

Damian started his reply with that weird little noise he made, some combination of teeth sucking and tsking. Clark felt dread clamp onto his spine. 

"You have answers to all the questions, so how about this one? Why haven't you said anything instead of pining like a tween girl?" 

The dread on Clark's spine reached out to wrap around Clark's lungs. Damian knew? Did the other bat-kids? He was saved from responding by Bruce calling Damian's name and continuing. 

"Sexist language internalizes prejudices that can prevent an impartial analysis of the evidence." 

Clark would have gladly thought about Bruce being feminist simply because he didn't want anybody to get away with crimes, but Bruce continued speaking. 

"Also, what are the house rules about detective skills?" 

Damian sighed, in the evacuating all air from the lungs way only kids had. "Our inductive reasoning skills should be continuously practiced but only discussed or recorded in relation to a crime and not used to cause emotional harm." 

"Wait, your objections to what Damian said are that he used abilist language and said them out loud?" Clark asked before he could think better of it. "Not that he, apparently, thinks I'm pining over somebody, without evidence?" Clark tacked that evidence bit on the end, hoping that would be seen as the reason for his objection. 

Bruce tilted his head slightly as he considered. "Since Lois left you for someone more down-to-earth, I would characterize you as suffering from unrequited love, not pining, but Damian's observations are valid." 

"I'm not" Clark stuttered and blurted out the only way he could think of to end that sentence without him needed to hide on the sun for millennium, "pining for the fjords!" 

Tim and Dick laughed, while Jason only rolled his eyes. 

"Since he's not pining for Lois, I could still use the term pining." Damian stated triumphantly, as if needed to prove his deductions. 

"He's acting the same way he did before he got together with Lois, so my observations have a greater time frame to pull from." Bruce informed his son. 

Now Tim and Jason laughed, while Dick responded. 

"That's right, Clark's always acted that way, ever since you've known him." 

Clark got the same feeling he got right before something terrible happen. Like watching a train wreck at the far reach of his vision, and even as he took off and flew there he knew he would be too late to stop it but he couldn't look away either. Normally, he'd go as quick as he could toward that feeling, but now he reached for any excuse to get away. 

"Maybe," Steph piped up, "we should talk about how Bruce acts around Clark." 

Steph's words anchored Clark to the ground better than any villain had ever managed. 

"Or, we could get breakfast and decided if we are going to breed Batcow." 

"Beatrice." Damian corrected Bruce. 

"No, I'd like to hear more about your actions, Bruce." Clark was almost used to being the one behind the curve when he was around the Batfamily, so he wasn't even embarrassed to ask for clarification. 

"Clark, are you attempting to commit a crime?" Bruce turned to glare directly at Clark as he asked what was probably not a rhetorical question. 

"No?" Clark's confusion was more from the question than the answer. He was standing here, not about to do something illegal. Wasn't even trespassing, as he had an email giving him permission to be here. 

Bruce turned to look at the kids, who all found something else to look at except Bruce. Except Cas, who looked to Bruce with confusion on her face. 

"What emotional harm from knowing feelings?" Cas asked, the first words Clark had heard her say all morning, though that wasn't unusual. 

Clark knew that Bruce knew how Clark felt, so Clark would only be embarrassed if it was brought up. As most of the crowd here seemed to know how Clark felt, only Clark would be emotionally harmed. No secondhand embarrassment for the batkids, having to watch Bruce gently let down a heartbroken Clark. Bruce spent time as Brucie, so he didn’t really do embarrassment, and Clark did not want to be the one thing that made Brucie embarrassed. 

Bruce was, at heart, a teacher and when confronted with a lesson he could impart, he felt compelled to do so. As such, and because he understood Cas better than anybody else, he had to answer. 

"By having feelings for another person, they are encouraged to feel the same. If they don't, then then they feel bad for not feeling the same. Forcing people to deal with those emotions can make things awkward." Bruce explained to Cas. 

And Clark immediately felt horrible, for forcing his emotions out there where Bruce had to deal with them. His pining wasn't just something to ignore, apparently it made Bruce feel bad, awkward, made Clark an emotional burden to him. Clark needed to go hide in the sun for a million years.

Damian made that noise again. "No wonder mother had to drug you." 

"You were drugged?" Clark shoved his emotions back into their batbox and turned to focus in at Bruce. If he looked close enough he could look for traces of things in a human bloodstream, but he really didn't know what he was looking for. 

"About nine months before Damian was born." Bruce admitted and explained. "So it's cleared my system." 

Clark looked away, sheepish, but he didn't blush until he Tim was finished speaking. 

"He wouldn't panic like that for anybody else." Tim observed. 

"Got more practice with his vision trying to peak under Batman's lead mask than anything else." Dick offered, the voice of experience, the person who knew the two of them before they knew each other's secret identities. 

"When did Bruce stop wearing the lead, before or after Clark knew?" Jason asked in a tone that suggested he knew the answer already. 

"Stop." Batman commanded from Bruce's throat. "Clark does not have romantic feelings for me. Go eat breakfast." 

Clark wasn't listening to the words so much as the tone. Bruce had gone from half asleep to Batman without an emergency. That was probably as telling an emotional response as Clark was ever likely to get, so he turned to look Bruce in his ice-chip eyes. "Yes I do." 

Bruce turned his attention to Clark, a moment of shock and vulnerability on his face quickly hidden. It was enough to make Clark keep talking. 

"I met Lois first and I do love her, but she was always the safe choice. Boy, girl, house in the suburbs, everything a normal human who blended in with society should want. Not everybody can pull of a secret identity that makes the tabloids. I've always acted the same way around you because I've always loved you. Your kids have all figured it out,” Clark was interrupted by a soft clearing of a dignified throat, "and Alfred, so how could you not know? I knew you knew, and thought you were trying to avoid the emotional conversation and awkwardness that you just complained about." 

That was it, all of Clark's cards on the table, the last wild card, put down in one big gamble that this detective family was correct. 

"Always Lois." Bruce said, as if that was a complete sentence, an explanation, and a request for further information. Since it was Bruce, it was all of that and maybe a bit more; a plea. 

Something warm nudged Clark's back and then a second time but harder. Clark automatically stepped forward so Batcow wouldn't injure her head on his nigh invulnerable body, but this brought him right into Bruce's personal space. "Maybe, but it's also always Bruce." 

Batcow mooed. 

As if it was a starting gun, Bruce and Clark moved, mouths meeting in a rush, a hungry search for the best way to fit together. After a struggle, Clark let Bruce figure that out, so he could devote his brainpower to figuring out the best way to touch Bruce, to memorizing the feel of Bruce in his arms. 

The applause brought Clark and Bruce back to awareness of their audience, and got Clark to pull his left hand out of the back of Bruce's sweatpants. Bruce wasn't wearing underwear, which prevented Clark from pulling completely away from Bruce, not wanting to show his appreciation to the Batfamily. Bruce rested his forehead on Clark's, as their performance was graded and wages were settled. 

"Clark," Bruce said during a lull from the peanut gallery. "Would you be so kind as to escort me to my balcony? I believe we have a few things to discuss." 

"Gladly." Clark said as he found the best possible way to hold Bruce to him, while using the man as an erection shield. 

"Hey, aren't you going to ask our permission?" Dick asked. 

"You must prove your worth!" Damian called, though not as jokingly as Dick. 

"If you thought I wasn't worthy, you shouldn't have force me to admit my feelings." Clark snarked back, surprising everybody, including himself. In his arms, Bruce began to laugh. Clark had never heard Bruce laugh like this, completely free of the bitter edge it usually held. It was more from a release of other emotions than Clark being particularly funny, but it was still amazing. 

"I love you." Clark had to say. 

Bruce stopped laughing to kiss him again. “You’d have to love me to risk embarrassing yourself in front of that crowd of potential stepkids.” 

There was a little bit of panic at those words, potential stepkids. Doing anything with Bruce meant knowing his kids would always come first, but Clark had known that. What washed away that panic response was another explanation, about the meaning of stepkids. 

“To be my stepkids, I’d have to marry you. Not a traditional way to ask, but I accept your offer of stepkids.” Clark knew he was smiling like a loon, but he couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. “I love you, and I love your family.” 

Clark turned to look at the family, only to find that meant looking down. Apparently, he was so happy he was floating, Bruce secure in his arms, and he didn’t even care if he looked surprised to see he was floating. He’d deal with any mocking later. 

“You heard your father, go eat breakfast. We love you and will see you soon.” 

Still smiling, Clark floated Bruce to the balcony outside the master bedroom. By the time the batfamily had recovered from an open admission of love, all of Clark’s focus was on Bruce. 

Bruce seemed as stunned as any of his kids by the open discussion of feelings, so his response to Clark was almost shy, until he got over it. He got over it quickly, and provided his enthusiastic cooperation. There was no more _discussion_ of breeding that day. 

sB _Sb_ Bs


End file.
